Conference Performance Watch

[jncuse]

As I do in many November and December's I will track how the ACC is doing in November and December relative to other conferences. How conferences do in November and December ultimately play a huge factor in determining the makeup of the field (teams and seeding). Conferences can't really recover from a bad out of conference, because they only play each other which has a negative multiplier effect (or positive multiplier effect if your conference does well).

The ACC was terrible OOC last year -- the number of bad losses it suffered was historically unheard of for a P5 conference not named the Pac-12.

I am hoping Syracuse is good enough to at least be a bubble level team this year so it is relevant. The ACC was so terrible last year that even if we had won 20 games we likely had no shot of getting in.

 

[jncuse]

And so the crap starts on Day 1.

KenPom #276 Stetson beats Florida St.

I guess the good thing was that it was only one game... last year it might have been more.

 

[Orangezoo]

And so the crap starts on Day 1.

KenPom #276 Stetson beats Florida St.

I guess the good thing was that it was only one game... last year it might have been more.

Not many performances to be excited about even amongst the wins. Worried about the B10 ACC challenge once again and it really hurting the league.

 

[jncuse]

Not many performances to be excited about even amongst the wins. Worried about the B10 ACC challenge once again and it really hurting the league.

It seems first night is really cupcake games for most P5+BE teams, so no leagues really got any big wins tonight. Looking at the other P5+BE games, I only noted 3 losses:
- Florida St vs KP#276 Stetson
- Oklahoma vs KP#137 Sam Houston St.
- USC vs KP#258 Florida Gulf Coast

I don't think the ACC-B10 challenge was the major source of our issues last year IIRC -- I think the ACC may have won 5 of the games. Which isn't good and certainly did not help.

What hurt more was the inordinate number of bad losses compared to all the other elite conferences.

Working off memory here, so I could be wrong on a few points.

 

[jncuse]

I found this in my files from last year that I calculated during the tournament. At the time, People were stating that the ACC got jobbed for seeds based on what Duke, UNC, Miami did. I pulled these together - the committee can only base things on quality wins and other metrics which are highly influenced by OOC play. If your conference sucks before Jan 1, you will have less Q1 and Q2 teams (due to multiplier effect), and less quality wins.

I believe good wins were wins vs tourney teams (12 seed or above) and teams that were in the last 8 out.
Bad losses were Q3 and Q4 losses against OOC teams.

The ACC was comfortably in last in both regards.

 

[Orangezoo]

It seems first night is really cupcake games for most P5+BE teams, so no leagues really got any big wins tonight. Looking at the other P5+BE games, I only noted 3 losses:
- Florida St vs KP#276 Stetson
- Oklahoma vs KP#137 Sam Houston St.
- USC vs KP#258 Florida Gulf Coast

I don't think the ACC-B10 challenge was the major source of our issues last year IIRC -- I think the ACC may have won 5 of the games. Which isn't good and certainly did not help.

What hurt more was the inordinate number of bad losses compared to all the other elite conferences.

Working off memory here, so I could be wrong on a few points.

Yeah I was mainly getting at some poor performances in game 1 not so much big games. ACC once again looked shaky vs weaker opponents. Watched some of the Duke game- will be interesting to watch them this year. They have a ways to go to be a top 10 team on the court.

 

[jncuse]

So I decided to do a similar chart as I did last year tracking quality OOC wins by conference (Q1+Q2) and bad OOC losses (Q3+Q4) by conference. I used KenPom as a proxy for the NET for the time being.

The BIG10 has clearly been the dominant conference so far this year, and its not particularly close.

Notes of Interest - the Big East hasn't done much bad, but they have had about 7 cracks at a Q1 or Q2 win against the other top 5 conferences and have lost every time. SEC has 3 "good" wins but they are mostly borderline Q2 wins.

Another reference point is Conference RPI rankings. Not a perfect metric, but it tends to approximate NET when aggregated. Big Ten is at .61 vs the next best (SEC) at .56 in terms of power conferences. That is a massive difference - it looks small, but typically top conference are within 1 or 2% of each other (in the .57 to .59 range)

This type of early season dominance is not unusual for the BIG. They have performed the best (or very close to it) in November and December for about 4 years now. This will position them for a large number of seeds, if they maintain close to this pace (but its early). Of course March comes around and its a different story in terms of performance.

What about the ACC?
- They have the most bad losses due to Louisville (3) and Florida St (2). Syracuse has the other. Louisville and Florida St are the only P5 teams with multiple bad losses. This could cause a drag on the rest of the conference if there are 2 teams that are particularly bad.
- The ACC is sort of hanging around with all the conferences except for the BIG. So its too early to tell if this year
- Its still too early to make predictions on what conferences will dominate seeds due to OOC performance, except for the BIG which is off to a great start.

I didn't do any analysis for the PAC because they are horrible this year. Its clear from their RPI as of now.

 

[Orangezoo]

What about BC to Maine?